


The Villain is the Hero is the Villain

by shakespeareandpunk



Category: Peter Pan & Related Fandoms, Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Gen, Hook/Peter if you squint, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:03:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespeareandpunk/pseuds/shakespeareandpunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>teeny tiny drabble from this prompt in my ask box:</p><p>"Tell me more of Hook, story mistress. Tell me his obsession with the pan and his gentlemanly bend towards Wendy and his disdain for the lost boys. Tell me of of it all."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Villain is the Hero is the Villain

Captain Jas Hook, dark and sinister figure that is almost more myth than man, whose legends are whispered fearsomely throughout Neverland. Captain Hook who couldn’t exist without Peter Pan, who withers without Peter Pan, because he needs someone to bring him adventure; Captain Hook king of the grown-ups in a land of eternal youth, Captain Hook who never had a mother and was never told stories but chose to write them himself. Captain Hook, who Barrie himself referred to as “not wholly unheroic”; Jas Hook who abhors bad form, whose teeth are constantly on edge waiting for the tick-tock of the crocodile behind him. Hook whose wit and diction are almost as sharp as his namesake. 

Hook who needs Peter Pan, needs him to come back and wake up Neverland and give the pirate his purpose. But he knows Peter Pan isn’t the hero of this story, knows that he may be a dark and sinister man but that there is no one more sinister than Peter himself. He knows his role and he’s desperate to play it; he knows that he is the monster that Peter Pan tells his Lost Boys about at night.

__

 

The first time Peter Pan came to Neverland was the first time Hook saw the world in adventurous color. When Peter crawled out of his pram and towards Kensington Gardens, when he beguiled the fairies into taking him away, when he first touched down in Neverland, the ground beneath his feet was blessed and a whirl of colors sprung from his touch. And Jas Hook was like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time. 

When Peter fed Hook’s hand to the crocodile, Hook knew that he wanted to kill Peter, wanted him to suffer for what he stole. But he let him live (of course he let him live, you think Jas Hook, Captain of the Jolly Roger, couldn’t murder one smirking infant?) because he knew that adventure would die with Peter, that color would fade alongside him. Without adventure, without a fight, what is a pirate?

(and sometimes, when Neverland is sleepy, when the fairies are too tired to dance and the mermaids are too far down in the depths to even think about swimming up to the surface, Hook and Peter swap stories of their own adventures over tea, their own private ceasefire; sometimes they argue about who challenged who first, or who will win in the end, and sometimes they argue who is the hero and who is the villain)

Hook never had a mother, not really; he was never told stories in which he himself wasn't the villain. Now he says he hates stories, but what he hates is always being on the wrong side of them. But then came Wendy, Peter’s mother-figure protege, and Hook hated her. He hated her right up until the point that he lent his crooked ear towards her storytelling for the first time, a silly story of Cinderella and her prince, and he knew he wanted to be the hero of her stories. So he summoned every bit of nearly-forgotten etiquette from his Eton days and he tried to show Wendy Darling just how blurred the lines between hero and villain (between Hook and Pan) really are.

(The thing about the Lost Boys is that Hook despises the Lost Boys, despises anyone who makes the battle bigger than Peter and himself, even his own crew.)


End file.
